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Saturday, April 5, 2014

"Darling Omega" Song & Two Other Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. Songs From The 1970s

Edited by Azizi Powell

This post showcases two 2009 videos of three Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. songs from the 1970s as sung by new members of that historically Black Greek lettered fraternity. My transcription of the lyrics to those songs are also included in this post. Information and speculation about some of the sources and possible sources for two of these songs are found in the comment section of this post.

The content of this post is provided for folkloric, historical, cultural, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to the members of this fraternity who composed these songs. Thanks also to those who are featured on these videos and thanks to KingJames432 for publishing these videos on YouTube.

EDITOR'S NOTE:
I believe that fraternity and sorority chants and songs are folkloric products. As such they are worthy of being documented and studied. However, I recognize and respect the position that only persons associated with those specific organizations have the right to perform the songs and chants that are associated with their organization and I strongly believe that people who aren't associated with those organizations should be mindful of this restriction.

Neos setting owt some songs on their initiation... and NO.. they will never wear that much 'nalia at the same time again lol. Their voices were a bit hoarse.
-snip-
LYRIC TRANSCRIPTION

Song #1:
LYRICS: WHEN WE CROSS THE BURNING SAND*
(Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. song from the 1970s]

Lead- When we cross the burning sand
Group- When we cross the burning sand
Lead- Into Omega land
Group- Into Omega land
Lead- Oh what a joy it will be
Group - What a joy it will be
Lead – To be in this fraternity
Group- To be in this fraternity
Lead – Well, purple or gold, well, purple or gold
Group -Well, purple or gold, well, purple or gold
Lead - Will be the only colors we know
Group- Will be the only colors we know
Lead and group- And we gonna be workin, workin
all our lives
We gonna be workin for Omega Psi Phi.

[Repeat the entire song.]
-snip-
*I'm not sure if this is the actual title of this song.

Transcription by Azizi Powell from the video. The word "well" is given in italics because I'm not sure if that transcription is correct. Additions and corrections are welcome.

Note that this video begins with the group singing "Omega Psi Phi." I think those words are the end of another song as other lines of this song begin with the lead singing.

****
Song #2 [begins at 1:46]

LYRICS: WE LOVE OMEGA*
Lead – Well, we love
Group- We love Omega
Lead – Oh we love
Group- We love Omega
Lead- Ooh we love
Group- We love Omega
Lead and Group - Because it’s deep down in our heart
We said it’s deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper
down, down down ,down
Deep down in our hearts
We said it’s deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper
Down, down down down
Deep down in our hearts
Lead – Omega’s so high
Group- So high you can’t get over it
Lead- Omega’s so low
Group- so low you can’t get under it
Lead &Group- Omega’s so
Lead and Group – wide
Lead & Group -You must go through that door

[This video shows the entire song being repeated two times. This moderately uptempo song is accompanied by the singers' clapping their hands and later in the song raising their hands for the words "Omega's so high" and dancing/stepping down to the words "deeper" and "down".

*I'm not sure if this is the actual title of this song.

Transcription by Azizi Powell from the video. Additions and corrections are welcome.

7 comments:

I applaud the composers of these 1970s Omega Psi Phi, Fraternity, Inc . songs for their creativity. KingJames432, the publisher of both of these videos wrote in the summary of the "Darling Omega" video that "The '70s Bruhs would always woo the women with their vocal abilities...". The assumption is that this is a 1970s thing, meaning that brothers in later decades (if not earlier decades) didn't sing as much as they did in the 1970s. If that is so, I wonder what changed?

My guess is that Black males gathering on certain street corners and harmonizing doo-wop and other songs died out with the advent of Rap music. I recall groups of Black males singing on certain street corners in the 1960s. That was the decade that I "crossed the burning sands" onto Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority land.

I recall as an "ivy" (AKA pledge) my line sisters and I sung songs adapted from recorded Soul music and did dance-like movements while we sung. We didn't refer to those songs as chants. Nor did we consider the movements we were doing as stepping or strolling. It seems to me that what we now know as stepping didn't become really prominent in BGLO (Black Greek Lettered Organizations) until the late 1970s or early 1980s and beyond...

I wonder which songs may have served as inspiration for/sources of these 1970s Omega Psi Phi songs.

The 3rd song - whose title I gave as "We Love Omega" clearly has lyrics from the African American Spiritual "My Lord Is So High" (also known as "You Must Come In At The Door" - the lines that begin with "Omega’s so high" and end with "You must come in through the door" are adaptations of that Spiritual. But are there other song sources for the other words in that song or are they original creations?

My guess is that some of the lyrics for song #2 come from the church song "When We All Get To Heaven".

I'm not sure about Song #1. I wonder if it was at least partly inspired by the Beatle's song "Oh! Darling" whose working title (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh!_Darling was "Oh! Darling (I'll Never Do You No Harm)"..

However, that song's lyrics and tempo are quite different from the Omega Psi Phi song "Darling Omega". I also wondered if the Bo Diddley song "Dearest Darling" could have influenced that Omega song, but that song's words & tune are also very different from that Omega song.

I love each of these songs. I wish that there were more examples of these types of BGLO songs online.

If anyone has any information about these songs (or other 1970s BGLO songs) that would share, please do so.

Not strictly relevant to BGLO songs, but evidence university songs were often adapted from a shared body of music - the Yale fight song Boola Boola(1900) was based on 'La Hoola Boola' (1898, Cole and Johnson). Whether it was an original composition by Cole and Johnson or taken from a shared body of music available to them as African Americans I don't know.

In a comment to that post I wrote that a number of songs sung by historically Black Greek lettered fraternities are partly adapted from African American Spirituals. Another example is "Make Way The Q Train Is Coming" which is an adaption of the Spiritual "The Gospel Train".

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I'm an African American mother, grandmother, & retired human services administrator. For more than forty years I have shared adapted West African stories with audiences in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area.
I have four blogspots: pancocojams, zumalayah, cocojams2, and .Civil Rights Songs. Much of the content of these blogs were previously found on my cocojams and jambalayah cultural websites. I curate all of these blogs on a voluntary basis.
Each of these blogs have the primary goal of raising awareness about cultural aspects of African American culture and of other Black cultures throughout the world, particularly in regards to music & dance traditions.
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